A variety of products, such as electronic appliance batteries, nuts, bolts, hooks and other such hardware products are packaged by encapsulating the products on cards whereby the familiar "blister" or "bubble" product cards are formed. Modern merchandising techniques require the cards to be supported for unattended dispensing, as for self-service merchandising.
A common way for unattended dispensing of these product cards is to provide product card dispensers or hooks which are supported on perforated (peg) boards, slat walls or other like mounting surfaces. A problem exists in that under these circumstances, the product cards can be easily removed from the hooks, either maliciously as by pilferers, or inadvertently as by passersby brushing against the hooks. The inventions disclosed in co-pending U.S. patent applications Ser. No. 522,852 filed on May 14, 1990 and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 539,928 filed on June 18, 1990 by Mark A Niven address this problem. These inventions feature particular types of dispensing hooks which are configured to require discrete manipulation for removing product cards therefrom.
The present invention further addresses the aforenoted problem in that it features a rack for supporting a plurality of product dispensing hooks. The rack has a door which, when closed and locked, is effective for impeding the aforenoted malicious or inadvertent removal of the product cards therefrom and, when unlocked and open, facilitates reloading product cards on the hooks, as is necessary from time to time.